Who are the Tight Ends' True BFFs?

 I just heard Trent Dilfer say, “tight ends are a young quarterback’s best friend”. You hear this all the time, but it seems like a load of bullshit to me. I decided to do my own non-scientific study in order to test this theory. First, let's look at the top 5 tight ends in terms of receptions before week 11:
      TE                       Age of QB
1. Jason Witten            32
2. Tony Gonzalez        27
3. Rob Gronkowski     35
4. Jimmy Graham        33
5. Brandon Meyers      32

Of the top 5 tight ends, none of their quarterbacks are young. In fact, all of them are relatively old, besides Matt Ryan, and I don’t think the MVP candidate would appreciate the implication that he still needs Tony Gonzalez as a “safety blanket”. This data seems to imply that tight ends are used more by teams with (bold opinions alert!) good tight ends.
You also might notice that these teams are ones that throw the ball a lot. A skeptic might note that young QBs might not throw the ball as much as veterans, but they might exhibit a greater propensity to complete passes to tight ends. Since I am extremely bored, I decided to calculate the Tight end Usage Rate (( TE receptions/ Total completions) x100) of the five youngest starting QBs and the five oldest starting QBs in the NFL.
QB                            Age    TUR
1.Robert Griffin III     22         24%
2. Andrew Luck         23         22%
3. Russell Wilson       23         21%
4. Cam Newton          23         26%
5. Blaine Gabbert       23         18%
           QB                  Age       TUR
1.Peyton Manning      36         24%
2. Tom Brady             35         29%
3. Drew Brees            33         22%
4.Tony Romo             32         31%
5.Carson Palmer         32         23%

On average, the older quarterbacks have a higher TUR than the younger quarterbacks, which we could attribute to an ability to move through reads quickly, exploit mismatches, or get the ball out quickly(therefore needing less blockers), but I think that their offensive schemes seem to be the deciding factor. Whether your QB was born in the 70’s, the 80’s, or the 90’s, his “friendliness’ with his tight end is more correlated with the whims of his offensive coordinator than the date of his birth. Some offensive schemes use tight ends primarily as blockers, while others seek to use the tight end to create mismatches. This seems like a pretty obvious fact, but it is one that sage analysts, like Trent Dilfer, routinely ignore. Sometimes, I wonder whether these "experts" are experts of football or of the cliches of football.